Wed Mar 21, 2012 at 09:00:00 AM EDT

President

Illinois AP results:Big night for Mitt Romney as he wins big in Illinois. The final delegate count is not set but he will win the vast majority of this state's delegates. The count will likely be 42 delegates for Romney to 12 for Santorum. Either way its hard not to call this a huge Romney win.

Wyoming:Yes, every vote counts as the state GOP awards a delegate to Romney that had been awarded to Santorum. Apparently the Romney delegate for Park County had been elected on the second ballot at the county caucus, but for whatever reason another ballot was held. On that third ballot a Santorum delegate was elected. The new updated partial Wyoming numbers are 8 Romney, 2 Santorum, one Paul and one uncommitted delegate.

Senate

Nebraska: The state GOP has filed a challenge to Bob Kerrey's ballot spot. To refresh everyone's memory, Kerrey decided to run earlier this year for this Senate seat and then changed his mind about running. Then he changed his mind and decided to run. He then registered to vote at his sister's house. Then he registered at a friend's house. I wonder if Nebraska has the "tooth brush rule" which might help sort out where he is actually registered. Of course, he is still registered in New York and likely has several toothbrushes in New York where his family lives.

Massachusetts: This PPP poll has Warren five points ahead of Brown. It is out of line with several other recent polls that have Brown ahead of her. I am in such a good mood after Romney winning on Tuesday that I will not even fuss about this poll. Nor will I link any Rasmussen polls this morning. Consider this my Rodney King moment as I just want all of us to just get along.

House

Illinois results:There were crucial primaries settled on Tuesday night. Here's a partial list of winners: Jesse Jackson Jr. won renomination in the 2nd district Democratic primary. Tammy Duckworth won the Democratic nomination for the 8th district and has the honor of facing freshman Republican Joe Walsh. Brad Schneider won the Democratic nomination in the 10th district and will face another GOP freshman, Bob Dold. Finally, in a member versus member face off in the 16th district, Congressman Adam Kinzinger defeated Don Manzullo.

Illinois: Here's a good writeup on many of the primary results from Tuesday's house races in Illinois. The GOP will be trying to hold on to seats in IL8, IL10, IL11, IL13 and IL17. Those matchups are set while the Republicans will be trying to win the open seat in IL12 now held by Congressional Costello.

New York 27:Former New York AG Dennis Vacco is opting out of a race against Congresswoman Hochul. At the moment only Iraq War vet David Ballevia has announced on the GOP side. The expectation is that former Erie County Executive Chris Collins will enter the race, and he would be a favorite to take this seat.

New Mexico 1st: Former State Representative Janice Arnold Jones secures the offical endorsement of the Republican party for this open seat. In my opinion the GOP will struggle to win this seat if former ABQ Mayor Martin Chavez is the Democratic nominee. The former Mayor has ties to the business community and will be popular with the Hispanic population in this seat. The primary filing deadline was Tuesday the 20th and the primary is June 5th. Jones was endorsed by Republicans at their state convention over the weekend but may still face Gary Smith in a GOP primary if he secures enough signatures to gain a ballot spot.

Redistricting

Kansas:The State House gave a voice vote to a plan today but apparently things are still up in the air. This House plan will need to be reconciled with a Senate plan for the state's congressional districts. It is frustrating to see this state and New Hampshire, which both have GOP redistricting trifectas, struggle to finish their lines.

Miscellaneous

SD27:Has the GOP won this seat? The machine count on election day has the Republican ahead by 120 but there are 757 paper ballots out. There has been so many cases in New York State Senate races where absentee and provisional ballots have ended up in court. There was two close races in 2010 and several in 2008. So, I do not expect this matter to be settled quickly. Still it's far better to be leading at this point than it is to be behind so three cheers for the Brooklyn GOP. Now, a side note, it appears that the Democrats and Republicans swapped assembly seats in special elections on Tuesday. There will be recounts and absentee ballots that could let the Republicans win the Hudson Valley seat.

Bishop got more than 10 times the margin of victory on the independence line in 2010. You can make a reasonable argument that Bishop would have lost had Altschuler got it last time, as there are likely a couple hundred people that just vote for the "independence" line.

Do you have any update about the GOP candidate in this district? Israel retained only 1/3 of his current district and the district became more Republican. If the GOP wants to take him out, this would be the right time.

Is it possible that Israel is going to stop that DA from running against King in exchange for King keeping Israel's seat unchallenged by a Nassau County GOP office holder? It's surprising to me that no one has really expressed great interest in NY-02 and NY-03.

From IL-09, familial roots in MI-14, college in PA-02/07, and currently living in Barcelona.
Bob Dold for Congress, Mark Kirk for Senate, Andy Hill for WA Governor, Scott Walker for President!

Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton (D) will be headlining a fundraiser for Shelby County D.A. Amy Weirich (R). Democrats are contesting this race, so this is significant. I knew that there were even more reasons that Wharton was my favorite Democrat.

The GOP lost 2 seats, one expected in 60% Obama AD-100 and one unexpected in 51% Obama AD-103.
AD-145 was an anti-Shelly Silver D running on the GOP line with some GOP support, but will caucus with Ds. Ds now have a 101-49 majority.

>>>We called people who had a past history of voting in Democratic primaries, as we do for all primary polls. But I wonder if with the open primary and Schneider's status as the more conservative candidate if some people who usually vote in GOP primaries crossed over to support him. We would have missed those folks.

There should have been fewer R to D crossovers, not more, and more D to R crossovers. The D electorate should have been more liberal because moderates would have had more reason to vote in the Prez Primary, leaving only the more hard-core Ds in the D Primary, hypothetically helping Sheyman.

I mean, they're still going to vote for him in November. But the core-problems of mutual distrust and dislike are only re-emphasized and reinforced by blunders like this. Fehrnstrom (sp?) absolutely needs to be Kept Out of the media from here on. Romney would also do well to have someone act as a kind of unofficial "ambassador" to the Tea Party, talk-radio, and other non-partisan conservative groups. Sort of like what Hugh Hewitt does already, except it needs to be someone with an official role in Romney's organization, someone who can go on the record and speak officially on behalf of the campaign.

What I think you will see over the next 7-8 months is conservative activists lining up to volunteer with state/local candidates, but giving Romney little else beyond their actual votes.

Remember that in 2008, the old IL-16 was 53% Obama, IL-13 was 54% Obama, and IL-06 was 56% Obama. None of those districts were competitive, and the weakest of those (IL-06) still went Republican as an open seat in a bad year (2006) even with the DCCC spending huge money.

If ever there was a case where people would be upset by being chopped up in redistricting, splitting 600,000 people into 6 different Congressional districts probably takes the cake, at least now that the 5 way split of South Brooklyn is gone.

A Club for Growth letter being sent Wednesday -- shared first with POLITICO and addressed to Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy -- makes three specific requests.

Club President Chris Chocola asks the three top GOP leaders to stay neutral in Arizona's 6th Congressional District primary between freshmen Reps. David Schweikert and Ben Quayle.

Chocola also asks Boehner to donate $10,000 to Rep. Schweikert since he has already poured that amount into Quayle's campaign coffers.

A third request -- which leaders will say is out of their control due to the law -- asks the Young Guns Action Fund, a Super PAC run by former aides to Cantor -- to also stay neutral in the race.

Chocola then issues a warning, writing that "Should it become apparent that you are choosing sides on behalf of Rep. Quayle, the Club for Growth PAC will consider it necessary to intervene on behalf of Rep. Schweikert."

Great! David Schweikert is the best pick in AZ-06. He's really smart, has a great handle on the issues, and is a total nerd. He lives for his job.

On one hand I think that it's fine for them to support whoever they want to support... they have their own opinions and if they want to express them they have every right to. So I'm not about to call for leadership to stay out of primaries entirely, even bi-member ones.

They need to realise that they're making enemies doing this though, especially by backing an obvious underdog like Quayle. If Schweikert wins he's going to behave just like Manzullo would've; he'll have every incentive to rail against leadership at every turn. While that's probably good for Schweikert vis-a-vis his future prospects, it's going to be a real pain for Boehner and Co. in the years ahead.

There Is Literally NO Upsisde To The Leadership Endorsing in a Primary

About the only exception I can think of is if it's a local race in which a single member of the leadership endorses because of personal connections (e.g. Boehner endorsing somebody running in an OH district who was a former staffer or something).

Beyond that, the leadership should absolutely quit doing it. All it does is piss people off. I'll tell you - I'm not above voting against somebody the leadership endorses just to spite them. I'll bet I'm not alone.

There is literally no upside to the leadership endorsing in a Primary, especially in a member-vs-member race, unless one of the principals has ethics problems or something, or has consistently voted against the party line.

The NRCC has a job to do, and there's a very blurry line between recruiting candidates into the race and force-feeding a candidate to the district. When the NRCC calls up St. Sen. X asking him to take on an incumbent Democrat, it's natural for them to offer institutional support in a primary to entice him into the race. That's fine. Also I have no problem with the party pushing a candidate when there is a massive electability gap (Castle/O'Donnell, for example).

But I agree that members of the leadership other than Pete Sessions should not be playing in GOP primaries, especially in a Member vs. Member race. The only exceptions I can think of would be if one is corrupt, or one is a significantly better Republican. (For example, if Walter Jones and Renee Ellmers ended up in the same district.) Neither one of those applied to Kinzinger/Manzullo.

The Republican candidate is the son of one of the two judges in Greene County. Interestingly enough the father ran on both parties ballot lines in 2011 as we have fusion in judicial and school board races.

I was just thinking last night that I know personally eight, I think it is, PA politicians who either have been in prison, are in prison, or are headed to prison: 5 state reps, 4 state senators, 1 state row officer, & 1 party official.

Wait, that's 11 of them, ELEVEN! I am waiting for someone to say "you know him by the company he keeps."

The Bonusgate case was a virtual whose who of people from Greene County for me. Everyone knows DeWeese. Rodavich was heavily involved in my high school and was the cheerleading coach. Several of the other staffers I knew incidentially. One of the staffers who was essentially paid with taxpayer funds to have sex with DeWeese's chief of staff is the daughter of my brother's sixth grade teacher.

To put it mildly, my mother received some blowback when she told people I was working for the Attorney General over a two year period.

HD-14 is roughly EVEN PVI wise in Beaver County. Marshall won it against former House Whip and now resident of SCI Laurel Highlands in 2006. This is a seat the Democrats got to win to take back the State House. It also shows the legacy of Bonusgate... the Beaver County Democratic Party has been completely gutted.

The big question today is, if Rs believed that Storobin would win, would they have dismantled the district?
On 1 hand, maybe not, but on the other hand, local BP lobbyists might have an upper hand in Albany influence.

There is still the thing that BP has some very good lobbyists in Albany and Skelos promised them the district, though they wouldn't have thrown Storobin under the bus and might have made a district that is more Orthodox than now, as well as more Russian.
It's not exactly clear if local power brokers want to run someone like Felder as an R and throw Storobin under the bus if he wins in the end.
I'll have to speak to one of the power brokers that I spoke to in the past few days. He was actively involved in the Storobin campaign. Storobin did win big in Orthodox areas, but I wouldn't say that he cleaned up like McCain and especially Turner.
My best part of the night is the defeat of my councilman David Greenfield whom I loathe and apparently isn't the DINO he pretended to be during the election.

I assumed that Storobin would have ran in the new district regardless of the outcome in the special election. Would Skelos really fashion a district that would elect a DINO rather than a Republican acceptable to the community?

Doesn't end up winning, then he has nothing with the new district. If he wins, he will try hard to be chosen as the R candidate in the new district.
It might be tough, the deal with Skelos was, give us the district and the power brokers will all support a Republican for the senate, but if they pick Storobin and Ds pick a local DINO who is Orthodox, it might be more competitive than it should be. Therefore it's tough.

Well, I hope that the Republicans don't screw it up. As far as the absentee D vs R ratio....I was wondering if you knew offhand what the D vs R ratio was in Storobin's strongest areas (presumably the Orthodox areas). If they are 4 to l like the rest of the district then I feel pretty confident that he will come out on top.

I am really surprised the absentee ballots didnt favor the GOP more. Usually in NYC the GOP targets GOP voters with an absentee ballot aplication mailing. Its easier for the GOP to do this than the Dems since a lot of registered Dems might only be registered as Dems to vote in the primaries which in NYC ususally picks the winners of elections. So if a voter is a registered Republican (or Conservative) you know he's a GOP voter for sure while a registerd Dem might vote agaisnt the Dems. So the registeration makes it easier for the GOP to target their sure voters than the Dems.

Right now Fidler needs to win over 58% of those votes to win. That might be too much. Of course more ballots could arrive at the board of election in the mail before thext Tues so that % that he needs will drop. Also not sure how many provisional paper ballots were cast. Those ususally lean quite heavily Dem (although in this district with all the Russians who knows).

With a 120 vote lead out of 21,392 cast (a 0.56% lead) Storobin is in pretty good shape going in to the absentee ballot counting.

Just saying I was kind of suprised the GOP did not do more of a campaign to get GOP voters to vote via absentee ballot.

Gary Smith, a retired Army officer, is still in the race, and has actually outraised Arnold-Jones. He says he is staying in the race. But he didn't get enough votes at the convention for an automatic ballot status, so he'll need to petition his way onto the ballot (not that hard in NM).

While she should rather easily take the nomination, it is inaccurate to say she has no remaining primary opponent.

my post. Jones has secured a spot on the ballot because she secured the endorsement of the GOP at the state convention. Gary Smith can garner a spot if he gets enough signatures. I checked out Smith's website and its pretty good. He has raised some money so maybe he makes a race of it.

and I am not sure I would change NH lines if I could. I think Bass has run ahead of the R numbers in most of his district. If you made some changes to even things out he gets new voters. He runs 3-4% behind with those new voters, relative to his advantage with his old voters, how much further ahead is he?

Getting credible candidates to run in hopeless districts is a significant part of building a party's strength.

Now, is Thurman Thomas a credible candidate? I don't know. Obviously, his career with the Bills will at least cause most people there to listen to him once or twice. But once he starts to speak, it's up to him to make sure he has something memorable and worthwhile to say. I hope he does.

In the 70's Kemp represented the 38th district in South Erie. After the 1982 redistricting he represented the 31st, which expanded from Erie out to Wyoming, Livingston, and Ontario. On the map you linked, it's the blue district that sits directly on top of the Southern Tier district.

From quickly eyeballing it, I'd say a little more than half of the new 27th was represented by Kemp at some point.

ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. - Republican Officials in Erie County confirm that they are in talks with Buffalo Bills Hall-of-Fame running back Thurman Thomas about a run for Congress against Democrat Brian Higgins.

From IL-09, familial roots in MI-14, college in PA-02/07, and currently living in Barcelona.
Bob Dold for Congress, Mark Kirk for Senate, Andy Hill for WA Governor, Scott Walker for President!

Like T. Thomas. However, he's made some iffy moves politically, such as endorsing Jack Davis, and trying to mount a third-party bid of his own against Jane Corwin. Though, I honestly can't blame him considering the corrupt nature of smoke-filled rooms that the NYGOP uses to select candidates for special elections, and the fact that these same selection seem to fail everytime (Tedisco, Scozzafava, Corwin). I don't know why they just don't have a special primary, like we do in Mass.

It would be very hard for me to support Bellavia after he endorsed Jack Davis. Corwin probably would have lost even without him on the ballot, but the GOP's only shot at winning that special was uniting behind her and Bellavia's endorsement flew directly counter to that.

Collins would be dull but a sometimes a warm body is all you need to win a seat. If he runs, it's R+1 and we can go looking for our excitement elsewhere.

First, I said the 27th, I meant the new 26th.
Second, I must have messed up the formula in excel, I checked and have Paladino winning the Erie County part 51-42%. Paladino narrowly lost Niagara Falls, but he more than made it up in North Tonawanda City.

He would have been a great get for the GOP. He was an insanely popular member of the Bills and from the stories I heard about him he's an incredibly nice guy. Higgins district is winnable for the GOP. While it is strongly Dem it is a conservative working class Dem area that can swing to the GOP if the right candidate runs. In fact the district used to be represented by a Republican Jack Quinn before Higgins won it in 2004. If Thomas ran could have been especially interesting because he could have also made inroads into Buffalo's fairly large African American communities. If Paladino runs I think he could beat Higgins. Barring a Thomas candidacy a Paladino one would be the next best thing.

Nate mentions that Santorum is down to 1.5% to win the nomination on Intrade. Hillary Clinton is at 2% to be the Democratic nominee, so it is interesting that Hillary is more likely to be the Democratic nominee than Santorum the GOP nominee.

Collins was the Erie county version of Scott Walker & Chris Christie. That's why the Dems & the Muni Unions fought so hard to kick him out of office. He was one of the few NY elected Republicans with any sort of statewide potential which why Cuomo fought so hard to deny Collins re-election. In a state filled with RINOs and self serving corrupt pols Collins is one of the few honest good guys. So all this anti-Collins sediment here is really misguided and misdirected. I would expect this kind of misinformed hate of quality GOP candidates on DKE but not here on RRH.

As I've read more about him, my dislike for him has been reinforced for one reason: He is a bad politician. Christie has been the king of messaging since he first came into office and Walker's getting better. But both have been focused on their messaging and delivering a consistent approach. Collins never did that from what I know.

Collin's record strikes me as Schwarzenegger c.2004 - government by schizophrenia. First he retains a bunch of Giambra folks. Then he fires them. He makes a big show about tightening the purse at ECIDA, then finds he likes doling out the cash. He fights the Dems and then buys them off and then fights them again. And that six sigma obsession. And a bunch of other things. All this makes him look confused and flailing about with no clear vision, even if he did do some decent stuff along the way. A clearer-headed politician could have been able to do what he did without all the extraneous wackiness.

More importantly, a better politician would have been better able to sell his accomplishments. Collins failed at that because he didn't have a clear articulation of purpose. As a result people seized on the minor quagmires and he lost. It was a similar situation with his hand-picked stooge Corwin in the special. She got bogged down in a bunch of stupid mistakes and couldn't get a message out clearly.

I like hardcore Fiscons as much as you do, but I'm becoming terribly afraid Collins will say and do things that make the others look bad.

proper and the rest of Erie County in the County Ex race. It was the muni unions and there supporters in Buffalo that rallied the base in a low turnout election and got Collins knocked out. If Collins runs in the 27th he beats Hochul IMHO and if Collins gets elected he wont be some pork chasing backbencher.

which in NYS is a damn good thing. You are right if he was a better pol he would have sold out to the Muni Unions and special interest groups who run the state. That's what the NYS Senate GOP does. That's what Gov Pataki did. Instead he stood up to them and fought them. Did Collins zig zag all over the place to get things done? Of course he did. This is NYS and making the sausage here is particularly ugly and that is especially so when you are doing it in a Democrat county. But the bottom line is he put his political career at risk to do the right thing and make positive changes for Erie County. I cant fault the guy for that. And if you ask me thats exactly the kind of person we need in DC right now.

In January 2008, Alesi illegally entered an unfinished Perinton home, mistakenly believing it to be on sale, and broke his leg while climbing a ladder. The front door of the home was locked, but Alesi managed to gain entry through an unlocked back door. He did not have permission from either the builder or the homeowners to enter the house. The owners and builder declined to press charges for trespassing. On January 18, 2011, the same day the statute of limitations for any potential trespassing charges expired, Alesi filed a lawsuit against the owners and the builder alleging an unsafe environment at the home site. After criticism from members of the public and other Republicans, Alesi withdrew the suit.